Collision Of Trains In India Kills Hundreds

Early Investigation Points To Possibility Of A Signal Failure

August 03, 1999

NEW DELHI — Two crowded trains slammed head-on into each other before dawn Monday, killing at least 220 people and injuring more than 350 at a railroad station in eastern India near the border of West Bengal and Assam, railway authorities said.

Throughout the day, rescue workers attempted to cut through the vast tangle of crushed coaches, trying to make their way to hundreds of bodies still trapped in the smoking wreckage.

The death toll was expected to rise sharply in what already was one of the worst accidents in the history of India's rail system, which is the second biggest in the world after China's, and to a large extent a dilapidated relic of the colonial era.

More than 2,000 people--

including many soldiers--were said to have been aboard the two trains.

The accident occurred at 1:55 a.m. local time at Gaisal station, about 250 miles north of Calcutta. It involved the Awadh-Assam Express, which was bound for Guwahati, Assam's commercial capital, and the Brahmaputra Mail, which was headed for New Delhi carrying a large number of soldiers from the Border Security Force and the Central Reserve Police Force.

While early reports indicated that the accident may have been caused by a bomb, officials said later that an initial investigation pointed to a signal failure.

"It is not an explosion or a bomb blast," said M.G. Arora, a spokesman for Indian Railways. "It is a collision of two trains."

If a faulty signal is to blame, it is likely to lead to renewed criticism of India's rail system, a public behemoth that each day transports 13 million people-- many of whom hang out doorways or cling to the roofs of stuffed cars--and is notorious for being a slipshod, uncomfortable and starved for funds.

Accidents occur nearly every day on India's railways, a vast network carrying passengers facing risks from unlit crossings, animals on the tracks, old equipment and guerrilla insurrections.

India has 14,000 trains running on about 40,000 miles of track, from narrow-gauge trains up steep mountains to express trains that run for days across stretches of plains, forests and desert.

More than 400 accidents occur every year, killing an average of 700 to 800 people a year.

Officials say that about 60 percent of the accidents are caused by human error.

Less than a year ago, in the northern state of Punjab, a train rammed into cars that had uncoupled from another train and toppled onto the adjacent tracks. Police put the death toll at 208.

The worst accident on record happened Aug. 20, 1995, when a passenger train rammed into the rear of another express train that had stopped after hitting a cow on the tracks after midnight.

A signalman gave the crowded train the green light to continue, failing to notice the first train had halted. He later fled. A total of 358 people were killed in that incident.

Monday's crash left coaches piled atop each other like logs on a campfire.

Survivors described being hurled through the air and dumped upside down.

The dead, covered by white sheets, were laid out in long rows near the side of the tracks. Rescue operations were slowed by the lack of a crane to lift one collapsed heap from another.

"I've never seen such a thing before," said Sameer Banarjee, a district official reached near the scene by telephone. "I can never forget it. It was too terrible, in every way too terrible."

Suitcases, broken glass and bedrolls were strewn across a large area. The injured wandered about, with pieces of torn clothing wrapped around their limbs to stop the bleeding or cover their burns.

Medical students from a nearby college tended dazed and wounded passengers, most of whom had been asleep when the hulks of steel hurtled into each other.

Weeping relatives attempted to identify the dead.

"Many bodies could not be recognized," Banarjee said. "They were burned and battered beyond recognition."